What's wrong with Tiger Tim?

Tim Henman has been brought up too well for him ever to become a tennis great and needs psychological counselling to help him win a grand slam, say Britain's leading analysts.

Television psychologist and author of Britain on the Couch Dr Oliver James said that many top tennis players have led difficult childhoods which has helped them battle to the top in later life on the world circuit.

Henman, however, has had life relatively easy and this is the reason the British No1 yesterday whimpered out of the Australian Open at the less-than-threatening hands of world number 64 Jonas Bjorkman.

"Henman's from a very stable background," Dr James told Guardian Unlimited today. "Nearly all outstanding tennis players like many top sports people were very strongly pressurised by their parents and subsequently confused this motivation with their own desires and are horribly muddled up and are not sure whether it's them or their parents who want them to succeed."

"Maybe Henman was not pressurised and simply was not buggered about enough as a child - didn't suffer sufficient adversity - to have the kind of hunger that an Agassi has.

"When you think there is a lot of evidence that real exceptional achievement in most fields of activity results from the way you're brought up and from extreme adversity, it stands to reason that extreme adversity is missing from his history and that he therefore doesn't have quite such the same hunger."

Professor Cary Cooper, an expert in psychology and stress related issues at UMIST and an author of over 30 books on the subject, also thinks that Henman's middle class background has scuppered his chances of success.

"A lot of winning athletes come out of insecure environments. Look at the Williams girls, for example. They come out of backgrounds in which they've struggled and then they take that struggle into sport."

Prof Cooper believes that Henman needs to consult a psychologist in order to break his grand slam duck.

"I think Henman needs some kind of help psychologically, I really do," Prof Cooper said today.

"He needs to be psychologically more aggressive. When I heard him speak before the match he was just not as positive as he should have been. When the expectations are high we know he doesn't deliver."

At the age of 27 and at the peak of his playing powers, Henman has yet to realise his potential and win a major tournament. And he will arguably never have a better chance than the one he failed to take this week in Melbourne. As all the big names dropped out, the draw opened up like the Red Sea, seemingly offering Henman a straight-forward route into the final.

But as the BBC's commentators were scaling new heights of hyperbole, somehow you just knew he was going to come ignominiously crashing down from the pedestal. He's British after all. After all the hype and hope, out he went in straight sets to the journeyman Swede, 6-2, 7-6, 6-4.

"Henman's got the skills, but there is a block," said Prof Cooper. "It's what we call the driver.

"We have to channel the 'there's no way he can do it' into 'I'll show you'. I think he could do it. He could win Wimbledon if he could channel the aggression.

This Morning's Dr Raj Persaud, consultant psychiatrist at Maudsley Hospital in South London and author of Staying Sane: How To Make Your Mind Work For You, says that the psychological element is more pronounced in tennis than in most other sports.

"You can win fewer points than your opponent in a match and still win and there are very few sports that are like that," he said. "And the reason is that there are certain points that are crucial.

"Players like Henman seem to have a lot of technical ability but their ability not to choke at the vital moment needs working on. This is a psychological issue rather than a technical issue and it's to do with the dealing of pressure."

But rather than getting more aggressive and angry as Prof Cooper argues, Dr Persaud believes that Henman, like George Costanza's father in Seinfeld, needs serenity now.

"One of the keys in winning in a sport like tennis is to keep your psychological equilibrium - to stay calm and unmoved by setbacks. It's about keeping calm through the ups and downs of the match."

The problem with Tiger Tim, says Dr Persaud, is that he is emotionally unstable on court.

"When Henman scores a good point he looks very intensely excited by that. He clenches his fist and looks over to his supporters in the box and he looks very churned up in a positive way," he said. "But the problem with that is that it does suggest that he is someone who is not on an even equilibrium throughout the match.

"He needs to develop more psychological resilience and emotional detachment. It's a very difficult state to achieve because you want to win so much.

"The evidence is that people who are not very well trained in this area make mistakes, like a football manager who blows his top at half-time. Where they are going wrong is that they are emotionally over-arousing the team. This usually isn't helpful. Calmness is the most helpful thing in sport."

But Dr Persaud believes that with help Henman could master his mind game. "It's just about making the connection with the right kind of expertise," he said, before reeling off some methods for control on-court madness.

"One technique is called self-instructional training. We believe that what you are saying to yourself is extremely important throughout the game. It's about making sure that stray or unhelpful thoughts don't enter the mind and that takes a huge amount of training during three hours of a long tennis match.

"Another technique is one called 'clear your computer'. If you've lost a set point or made a grievous error, you say to yourself: 'That's over, that's done with. I'm not going to dwell on that for the next point.' "

Prof Cooper believes that Henman could use yesterday's loss to spur him on. "You know what might be the motivator now? You know what I'd work with him on? I'd work on everybody saying, 'You're finished.' Just like they said to Manchester United earlier in the season.

"I would build on proving to everybody that you can do it. That motivated United. And look what happened there. Huh? What did they do? Huh?

"Do not write Henman off. This loss is going to be a motivator. Let him read the papers. That would fuel him, for sure. That would get him angry. Then he can channel the anger and prove it to them and he can do it this year."

Not that Henman would ever get too angry. He's been too well brought up.